Wah Work. I Don't Wanna.

I want to purge. 
The anxiety of returning to work has my stomach sick. 
Breathe. 
Remember to breathe. 
In through the nose out through the mouth. Again. Again.
I slowly release and immediately gasp for air.
I feel like I'm drowning--I am drowning. 
Swallowed up by worry and frozen with fear from the unknown.
Anxiety rocks my heart against my rib cage. 
The breath comes from my chest shallow, light.  
I'm outside myself. I can't calm down. 
Just calm down.
This goes on for minutes.
I don't know where I am or where I was or what I was doing. 

Then I'm brought back by the beat of Ultra 2014 streaming live into my headphones.
The steady heart of the music. 
I close my eyes and I'm back there, only two years ago.
When I was at my first ever music festival, UMF 2012.  
I'm a too skinny, scared, 24 year old, anorexic, bulimic me.
And somehow in that mix I began to find room for hope.

I felt it in the crowd. In the music. In the lights. The air. My breath. My body.
It was pulsing in the night.
I was completely sober and yet in those hours where the lights flashed and the beats crashed I was high.
Elated.
Anew.
Different.
Light.
Real and yet surreal.
In a happier, gentler world I never knew.

"You'll never fly if you're too scared of the height."

I was scared to go to Ultra back then.
And now I am scared to go back to work.
This is my second time coming out of a treatment center, trying to take those next crucial steps towards living a life without an eating disorder.

I am scared to fail, I am scared to succeed, I am scared to leave 'my home'.

And yet I went to UMF and I was so far out of my comfort zone. I was submersed in a world that while it was new and scary and foreign it was warm, it was love. People respected themselves, those around them, the air radiated love, positive energy.

There was a seed planted for the recovery life I am living today in those three days because I did something I feared.

Now I face my fears every day when I eat lunch, when I do not workout, when I talk about my trauma and when I ask for help.

And each time I am rewarded with a little more strength, a little more peace and a little more life.

The music quiets and the beat gets ready for a drop, my heart flutters and tears come to my eyes.

I smile to myself.

I close my eyes and picture myself next to the old me and take her hand and we sing the words together 

"Freedom ain't free it's a long road"

And she tells me it's ok to take this leap of faith.

"If you never say goodbye."

And now I am here and I am calm and I am ready for what tomorrow holds because I know there is a power out there, an energy that will help carry me through it as it did two years ago and as it will for the rest of the years to come.